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Page 7
CHAPTER III.
To understand the impression which Paul's letter produced upon Miss
Ludington imagine, in the days before the resurrection of the dead was
preached, with what effect the convincing announcement of that doctrine
would have fallen on the ears of one who had devoted her life to hopeless
regrets over the ashes of a friend.
And yet at no time have men been wholly without belief in some form of
survival beyond the grave, and such a bereaved woman of antiquity would
merely have received a more clear and positive assurance of what she had
vaguely imagined before. But that there was any resurrection for her
former self--that the bright youth which she had so yearned after and
lamented could anywhere still exist, in a mode however shadowy, Miss
Ludington had never so much as dreamed.
There might be immortality for all things else; the birds and beasts, and
even the lowest forms of life, might, under some form, in some world,
live again; but no priest had ever promised, nor any poet ever dreamed,
that the title of a man's past selves to a life immortal is as
indefeasible as that of his present self.
It did not occur to her to doubt, to quibble, or to question, concerning
the grounds of this great hope. From the first moment that she
comprehended the purport of Paul's argument, she had accepted its
conclusion as an indubitable revelation, and only wondered that she had
never thought of it herself, so natural, so inevitable, so
incontrovertible did it seem.
And as a sunburst in an instant transforms the sad fields of November
into a bright and cheerful landscape, so did this revelation suddenly
illumine her sombre life.
All day she went about the house and the village like one in a dream,
smiling and weeping, and reading Paul's letter over and over, through
eyes swimming with a joy unutterable.
In the afternoon, with tender, tremulous fingers, she removed the crape
from the frame of Ida's picture, which it had draped for so many years.
As she was performing this symbolic act, it seemed to the old lady that
the fair young face smiled upon her. "Forgive me!" she murmured. "How
could I have ever thought you dead!"
It was not till evening that her servants reminded her that she had not
eaten that day, and induced her to take food.
The next afternoon Paul arrived. He had not been without very serious
doubt as to the manner in which his argument for the immortality of past
selves might impress Miss Ludington. A mild melancholy such as hers
sometimes becomes sweet by long indulgence. She might not welcome
opinions which revolutionized the fixed ideas of her life, even though
they should promise a more cheerful philosophy. If she did not accept his
belief, but found it chimerical and visionary, the effect of its
announcement upon her mind could only be unpleasantly disturbing. It was,
therefore, not without some anxiety that he approached the house.
But his first glimpse of her, as she stood in the door awaiting him,
dissipated his apprehensions. She wore a smiling face, and the deep black
in which she always dressed was set off, for the first time since his
knowledge of her, with a bit or two of bright colour.
She said not a word, but, taking him by the hand, led him into the
sitting-room.
That morning she had sent into Brooklyn for immortelles, and had spent
the day in festooning them about Ida's picture, so that now the sweet
girlish face seemed smiling upon them out of a veritable bower of the
white flowers of immortality.
In the days that followed, Miss Ludington seemed a changed woman, such
blitheness did the new faith she had found bring into her life. The
conviction that the past was deathless, and her bright girlhood immortal,
took all the melancholy out of retrospection. Nay, more than that, it
turned retrospection into anticipation. She no longer viewed her
youth-time through the pensive haze of memory, but the rosy mist of hope.
She should see it again, for was it not safe with God? Her pains to guard
the memory of the beautiful past, to preserve it from the second death of
forgetfulness, were now all needless; she could trust it with God, to be
restored to her in his eternal present, its lustre undimmed, and no trait
missing.
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